A literate meditation on clipped-lawn places easily taken for granted but that well deserve such reflection.
A scion of the suburbs considers how housing shapes destiny.
Suburbia was a largely postwar phenomenon, born of the need to provide homes for returning veterans eager to start families and trading on a long-standing dream that was hitherto reserved only for the rich—namely, “a place outside the city.” This dream was initially reserved, too, for a special class of people: whites for whom low-cost, low-interest loans were readily available courtesy of the Federal Housing Administration. That has changed, writes Diamond, who wrote of suburban life in his 2016 book Searching for John Hughes. Now there are suburbs made up of people of diverse ethnicities, albeit usually segregated. More than half of Americans live in suburbs, a fact that may surprise young city dwellers; if the countryside is ever emptier, the rings of settlements outside the cores of places such as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles continue to grow. Diamond is interested in demographics but not exclusively. As the narrative progresses, the author becomes increasingly eloquent about such things as pop music—for much pop is driven by suburbanites, who share a “belief that you’re doing something bigger than the place you’re from”—literature as written by the likes of Dave Eggers and Jonathan Lethem, and film such as, yes, John Hughes’ oeuvre and Sofia Coppola’s interpretation of The Virgin Suicides. Clearly, Diamond has given a lot of thought to the “faux-pastoral” nature of the suburbs and their tendency to resist the formation of true communities. If the cultural aspects of his narrative tend to be a touch repetitive, the point is well taken, as is his thought that now-dying shopping malls across North America (cue Arcade Fire) might well be converted to community centers, “making the ones that remain into places that serve a greater purpose.”
A literate meditation on clipped-lawn places easily taken for granted but that well deserve such reflection.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-56689-582-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
